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Attack On Titan S2: Historia (Review)

Ever since seeing this title last week, I was naturally hyped, if you’ve read my blog beyond my Attack On Titan reviews you’ll know I’m a huge fan of history and so a title of Historia, while it would seem to be pointing to a load of flashback sequences that we did get, also promised that I would like this episode. Which I did. Not quite as much as Soldier last week, but nonetheless a pretty epic (apparent) conclusion to this small arc of the expendable half of the 104th trapped by Titans.

But even more so was the revelation in this episode that Krista’s real name is the rather unusual sounding Historia. Which does make me love her a bit more than I already did, Krista is a wonderful name but Historia even more so. This season has been really good for fleshing her out, I don’t recall her having that much presence in season 1 and it looks like she will be a really important member of the team now, so bring on Historia and whatever power she has hidden away. I’m looking forward to that. She’s established herself as a major player in the wars of most prominent characters on this show, I’m just going to pray she doesn’t die now because she’s too cute (gotta marry her).

The episode started with an extended flashback to a point in training when the 104th were going through a winter survival. Most of them arrive at the camp, but when they do, they notice that Ymir, Krista and that guy from the first season who was a bit of a scaredy cat when Trost was attacked, Daz, are missing. Turns out Daz fainted or something and Krista, being the kind heart that she is, is trying to drag him to safety, while Ymir hangs around like a ghoul of death and tells Krista that they’ll never make it through this blizzard and she should just abandon him. It even gets a bit Archer vs Shirou as Ymir goes in on Krista’s heroic ideals, or more precisely, insinuating that she’s not actually trying to save him, instead she’s trying to effect a heroic sacrifice for her name and it’s insulting to Daz for such a limited effort. Which, as we learn more about Historia’s character here, does make sense. For the short version, as Ymir found out when she was eavesdropping in church, Historia is a bastard who was going to be ‘quietly disposed of’; but she joined the Survey Corps and took a new name and everyone involved said ‘fair enough, you’ll probably die by the end of the first season being cute and on the front lines, you can go do that’. And Ymir allegedly joined up to find this bastard girl.

Then Ymir pushes Krista to one side, obviously Titan shifts and gets Daz home safely while waiting for Krista to come home by herself. That was really nice, it shows to me that Ymir isn’t an ‘enemy of humanity’, at least not fully, while she’s gruff and asks hard questions, she does care about her friends, she waited outside for Krista in the cold and promises her to keep her secret (assuming Historia figured it out, she is a smart girl, and indeed, pretends she knew nothing of Ymir’s titan form in the present). And speaking of caring about their friends, it was ultimately meaningless but I really appreciated the scene where Eren, Mikasa and all of the 104th, even poor dead Marco (but not Jean because Jean will forever be forgotten), show up to defy the wishes of their instructor by planning to head out to rescue their missing members – it showed that despite everything, the team will stick together and now they’re reunited in the present (except Jean, who continues to be underused and forgotten) so it’s time to kick even more Titan ass. Except suffering must come first because this episode ended quite happily. Potentially.

See there was also a big battle where Ymir fought really hard and saved the lives of everyone (potentially Reiner and Bertholdt will have some questions for her but she did save their lives this time), and it ended with Ymir surrounded by Titans chomping down on her, the net effect being that she seems to have lost at least an arm and a leg if she isn’t mortally wounded, I couldn’t tell as the episode ended. Either way, she’s done a very heroic part in the story and has made her mark.

Oh, and Eren finally got his first kill as a human. Silly boy, charging ahead like that, but good on him. This season hasn’t done much for him (and for the other two of the nominal main three, Mikasa and Armin) yet, mostly focusing on Historia and other members of the 104th instead, I expect that to change from now on, but it has been great while it lasted, I now know a lot more about the rest of the team. And that’s really good.